What Is Anomalous Experience?

Anomalous experiences imply that the "experient" (the
person having the experience), experiences it as of
paranormal, psychic or bizarre kind such that it cannot
easily be explained using our conventional laws of science.
This does not imply that the experience truly is paranormal
or psychic. Most of the time, there are physical, psychological,
or statistical explanations. ESP or extrasensory perception
is the most well known term for one kind of anomalous
experience. It refers to communication of information
without using one's conventional physical senses. Many
feel anomalous experience in another sense implies contradictions
of the laws of physics. Dr. Neppe has regarded the term
ESP as prejudicial as if indeed such events occur, there
should be mechanisms involved that link with natural
laws. Many years ago he suggested neutral terminology
such as the word "delta" for the whole area of anomalous
experience and ESP would be "afferent delta" and psychokinesis
(PK) would be encompassed under "efferent delta". (1)
Many experiences are subjective and cannot be proven
objectively. They occur spontaneously and may be very
real for the person experiencing it - the experient.
The happenings may have origins in abnormal psychology
such as hallucinations which impair functioning, or
they may be unusual or unexplained phenomena, such as
subjective paranormal experiences. (SPEs) (2)
Because of this, we are able to research areas on subjectivity
in a non-prejudicial way. (3, 4, 5, 6). examining temporal lobe symptomatology
(3), incidence
of SPEs, associations with hallucinations of smell (5), and electroencephalographic correlates
(6).

Technically, the term "phenomenology"
has several meanings to philosophers, for example, "the
study of all possible appearances in human experience,
during which considerations of objective reality and
of purely subjective response are left out of account"
and this developed into Edmund Husserl's early 1900's
movement based on this doctrine. Furthermore, David
Hume developed "phenomenolism" as a philosophical doctrine
that percepts and concepts actually present in the mind
constitute the sole object of knowledge, with the objects
of perception themselves, their origin outside the mind,
or the nature of the mind itself remaining forever beyond
inquiry. (7) We use the term "phenomenology" in this
section a little differently: Phenomenology implies
the non-prejudicial philosophical and scientific study
of phenomena.

This way we are potentially able to correlate subjective
experience with parameters such as brain function and
natural environmental fluctuations such as geomagnetic
data, objective testing for anomalous experience, and
variations with other hallucinatory, autoscopic, déjà
vu and near-death experiences as well as obtain lengthy
subjective details about each anomalous experience potentially
demonstrating subtypes of phenomena. (8)

We will demonstrate with a dice game. Please note
that this is not an experiment for believers or skeptics.
Everyone can participate and such participation involves
understanding that any data accumulated may be used
for research or publication. Playing signifies tacit
consent to our use of that data. Use constitutes agreement
with the disclaimer.